The Alabama Department of Corrections will have more time to meet a court order to expand mental health staff in prisons if a federal judge approves an agreement between lawyers representing the state and lawyers representing inmates.

The two sides reached an agreement Friday on how to calculate and report staffing levels and resolve disputes. They appeared in court today.

U.S. District Judge Myron Thompson had scheduled today’s hearing for the ADOC to show why it should not be held in contempt of court for failure to meet benchmarks for mental health staffing set in a court order in February 2018. That order required all the mental health positions in the ADOC’s contract with its mental health provider to be filled by July 2018.

The ADOC has acknowledged its mental health provider, Wexford Health Sources Inc., has not been able to fill all the positions. But the ADOC says it and Wexford have made all reasonable efforts to do so. The ADOC had asked Thompson to modify his order.

Lawyers for the plaintiffs had asked Thompson to order the ADOC to show why it should not be held in contempt.

After Friday’s agreement, Thompson went ahead with today’s hearing to ask the lawyers questions about their agreement and other issues in the lawsuit over mental health care in Alabama prisons. The judge said he would need more time to study the agreement.

Maria Morris, an attorney from the Southern Poverty Law Center who represents the inmates, said the agreement means plaintiffs won’t seek a contempt finding against the ADOC based solely on the staffing levels until at least the end of June. After that, staffing below 85 percent of the requirements would trigger a warning and mediation process that could lead to another motion for contempt.

Morris said the most recent quarterly report shows 201 positions are filled out of 263.

Bill Lunsford, a lawyer for the ADOC, said the agreement clarifies the reporting process and facilitates communication with the two sides in disputes over mental health staffing. Lunsford said the realities of employing psychiatrists and other upper level mental health professionals in prisons has to be considered. He said the field has a high turnover.

The ADOC has said hours worked by mental health providers is a better way to measure the staffing level than positions filled. Lunsford said the new agreement gravitates more toward reporting the staffing level by the hours worked method.

Morris said the agreement is a hybrid of the two approaches.

Today’s hearing was the latest development in a case that started in 2014, when lawyers from the SPLC and the Alabama Disabilities Advocacy Program sued the ADOC over health care, mental health care and accommodations for inmates with disabilities.

In June 2017, Thompson ruled that mental health care in Alabama prisons fell short of standards required by the U.S. Constitution and called that care “horrendously inadequate.” Thompson said a shortage of mental health staff and correctional officers was an overarching cause of the poor care.

This afternoon, the ADOC said in a statement that if the judge had proceeded with the contempt hearing today that it was prepared to show evidence of significant success in increasing mental health staff.

“Even with recent success, the department understands that recruiting and retaining qualified mental health professionals to provide important services to our inmate population will be an ongoing effort,” the ADOC said in the statement from spokesman Bob Horton.

“We are very optimistic that the department has reached an agreement with plaintiffs as to the proper method to appropriately and fairly measure mental health staffing levels within our prison system into the future.

“The ADOC will continue to monitor and oversee our mental health vendor to ensure compliance with our existing agreement for the provision of mental health services.”